The New Fram Ultra......

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Of course; the jury is out....but, I may defer to Royal Purple for the time being. I emailed Fram over the weekend and haven't received a response. I'm sure it will be boiler plate!
 
tasch72 said:
So in the end, Fram upgraded the Ultra instead of the downgrade we assumed. Hopefully this won't result in a years-long prejudice like the fiber endcaps.
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Not sure I agree.

They SAY they upgraded it.

It didn't need upgrading, it was arguably best on the market. IME when a company says "new and improved" that usually means they improved their profits. That is especially true when the product was already very good.

I have been saying all along that First Brands/Trico would - in all probability - mess with the product line and in all probability it would not be good.

I think I was exactly right.
 
The old, metal backed media Ultra WAS 2 layer media, and Fram would have to really have to lay it on thick to convince me that the new cellulose supported Ultra is anywhere near as strong as the older ones-which literally NEVER showed any damage, or even bent pleats! Just can't see how a new Ultra is worth nearly twice as much as a Super Tech 20K or similar cellulose/synthetic blend filter. Unfortunately we're only .001% of Fram's customer base, so they won't see any real damage from this move.
 
DuckRyder said:
Not sure I agree.

They SAY they upgraded it.

It didn't need upgrading, it was arguably best on the market. IME when a company says "new and improved" that usually means they improved their profits. That is especially true when the product was already very good.

I have been saying all along that First Brands/Trico would - in all probability - mess with the product line and in all probability it would not be good.

I think I was exactly right.
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We're running out of old line, reliable oil filter manufacturers-these greedy conglomerates better keep their claws off Parker Hannifin/Clarcor, they're about the only ones left (Baldwin), along with Donalson & Fleetguard/Cummins.
 
OVERKILL said:
Well, the fact that the previous media was advertised as dual layer and they are now saying it wasn't raises red flags. I also wouldn't call it an upgrade, as cellulose won't flow as well as the depth/mesh combo, which is one of the reasons for the allure of that media, it provided excellent filtration while being able to simultaneously flow better because it didn't just work on the concept of pore blocking, which is how the cellulose media, which is what is backing the new ultra, operates on.
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DuckRyder said:
Not sure I agree.

They SAY they upgraded it.

It didn't need upgrading, it was arguably best on the market. IME when a company says "new and improved" that usually means they improved their profits. That is especially true when the product was already very good.

I have been saying all along that First Brands/Trico would - in all probability - mess with the product line and in all probability it would not be good.

I think I was exactly right.
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Fair points.

I don't want to call upon a certain member for more of his charitable actions in regards to oil filter efficiency and flow testing, but we have some solid data on the wire-backed media and I would be excited to see some data come through on the updated media.

In the mean time, I'm confident that if the revision went through R&D and still went to market, then I doubt there will be a notable loss in performance. If we start seeing data come in that says otherwise, I'll take my crow fried with mashed potatoes
 
OVERKILL said:
Yep, I know the mitigation mechanism in play (more pleat count) but whether that will wholly counteract the impact of switching from depth filtration to pore blocking? I doubt it. Will it be good enough? Absolutely. There are plenty of cellulose and cellulose blend medias that offer excellent efficiency and good flow, it's simply the fact that depth media is better on both counts and it is sad to see this shift as it definitely comes off as cheapening the product.
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Maybe we can get a "go fund me" going to pay @Ascent Filtration Testing to test a new XG10575 to compare it's ISO flow vs delta-p and efficiency against the one he previously did.
 
ZeeOSix said:
The video below is the same one I posted in post #94 ... but jumps to where he shows the 2-layer media on the Ultra. Apparently not even the engineers or whoever is emailing this info at Fram know how the old Fram is designed.

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Agreed. I posted a WCW comparison of the Ultra and Titanium media (post #135) earlier. Clearly shows the two layers for both. So they either don't know how previous Ultra media designed, orrrrr, one layer for the previous reads better for promotional comparison purposes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
drtyler said:
The last Mobil 1 filter I purchased was a PureOne clone, down to the new blue tinted media. The last RP filter was clearly Champ Labs. Both were this year and recent production.
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I don't care about the M1 filter, but it would be comforting to know that the RP is Champ Labs. It looks though like the RP is a Wix XP clone.
 
The old filter has 2 layers of the same media type. Even with doubling those, the filter wasn't durable enough. Thus the double media was bonded to a wire mesh backing for support. Now we have 1 layer of the original synthetic media combined with a layer of a new media design. The new media layer is more rigid than the old and provides the same level of support as the wire mesh, but also acts as another layer of filtration. The new media serves a dual purpose, you see? I can't share our testing data as it is proprietary of course. But the old design was 70% efficient at trapping containments 10 microns in size, and 91% efficient for 15 micron. The new design is 74% at 10 micron and 93% at 15 micron. I hope this is enough information to satisfy you. Thank you for using FRAM filters.
​
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From post #198 (info from Fram): "The old filter has 2 layers of the same media type."

In the videos showing the two layers, it's evident that are not "the same media type" unless they mean they were both simply synthetic media. But they are not the same media.
 
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